But you
and I would much rather be life holders under Monks than
rackrenters...."
St Thomas Aquinas has told us that there were three things for a sight
of which he would have endured a year in Purgatory, not unwillingly:
Christ in the flesh, Rome in her flower, and an Apostle disputing.
Christ in the flesh, I would indeed I might have seen, and Rome in her
flower were worth even such a price, but for me an Apostle disputing
would, let me confess it, have little attraction. Instead I would that
I might see England before the fall, England of the thirteenth,
fourteenth or fifteenth century, England of my heart, with all her
great cathedrals still alive, with all her great monasteries still in
being, those more than six hundred houses destroyed by Henry, and not
least this house of the Cistercians in Beaulieu. And if I might see
that, I should have seen one of the fairest things and the noblest that
ever were in the world.
From Beaulieu I set out in the afternoon across the Forest, and at
first over the western part of Beaulieu Heath for Brockenhurst. The
road across the heath is not in itself of much beauty, but it affords
some glorious views both of the Forest and the sea.
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